Abstract
In the classical production-distribution centers problem, only assignment of customers, distribution centers, and suppliers is determined. This paper extends the problem of production-distribution centers assignment by considering sequencing decisions in the supply network. Nowadays, meeting delivery time of products is a competitive benefit; therefore, the objective is to minimize total tardiness. This problem is mathematically formulated by a mixed integer programming model. Then, using the proposed model, small instances of the problem can be optimally solved by GAMS software. Moreover, two metaheuristics based on variable neighborhood search and simulated annealing are proposed to solve large instances of the problem. Finally, performance of the proposed metaheuristics is evaluated by two sets of balanced and unbalanced instances. The computational results show the superiority of the variable neighborhood search algorithm.
Highlights
In the supply chain, various organizations work together for converting raw materials to finished products and are connected with each other over far distances
The model which is developed in this paper is an extended format of Zegordi’s model which has two levels in the supply chain and he proved that his model belongs to NP-hard class problems; the model proposed in this paper which consists of three levels in supply chain is NP-hard and here we suggested two metaheuristic algorithms for solving the large sized problems
Different factors can have an effect on their satisfaction, and one of them is the delivery time of the products
Summary
Various organizations work together for converting raw materials to finished products and are connected with each other over far distances. We can mention Zegordi and Beheshti Nia [1] works who presented a model for the integration of production and transportation scheduling with the purpose of ISRN Industrial Engineering minimizing total tardiness and total deviations of assigned workload of suppliers in which different sites were assumed for the sources. Later, they [2] proposed a model which is like the one that is stated above but with a single site for the suppliers and an integer programming model is formulated to minimize the makespan.
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